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I am here reading my policy studies book, and came across a flow chart. Well, let me just say I am really surprised that it made it into the textbook how it was printed. Upon looking at it, you can tell that somebody just threw it together. I almost want to say carelessly threw it together, but that wouldn’t be right. After looking at it, I noticed that where the lines come together to make a 90 degree angle, the lines do not match up. Either they overlap a hair or don’t connect by about that much. You know when you do a drawing in Microsoft Word, you cannot always have the lines meet up precisely. I don’t know if I should be criticizing this so much because this book was written by a well known person in the public policy arena, and the people that the book is aimed towards is undergraduate students who are learning public policy for the first time, and are hoping to be lawyers and such.

None of the students that I have seen aren’t as technically savvy as I am, so they probably wouldn’t even notice such a small detail like this. I guess I am a little shocked that the editor and/or publisher did not catch this small error, and have somebody quickly fix the flow chart up. I guess the information is more important than the layout.

Part 1

So this morning I IM somebody just to say hi. I told her how I was having issues with my aide, basically he is being a whiny. So appologized, and said that if she could drive still, she’d come and help. I said I thought that she could drive still. She said no she lost it late April 05, or early May 05. I pointed out that we had met in late March, and she had told me she didn’t drive. When we started talking again in October or November, she told me that she had gotten her license in the summer.

Sidenote

In early July she disappeared, which included blocking me. And appeared again. /End sidenote

So, I said the conversation had to end there, then I asked her which part was a lie, since she had just said she had a license for the first month we met. Or was the lie that about getting it this summer. She got mad and signed off. I am curious why this happened, have I done something wrong for having a pretty good memory? Sorry.

Part 2

So a bit ago, another person messaged me, saying hey. Seeing that she has basically stopped talking to me after meeting this guy, I asked how things were with them. She answered he has hormone issues. So I am like did he turn out to be a horny bastard? She replied, no, the opposite, he wants to get to know me really well first. I asked then are you the one wanting sex, she said no. I am like ok, why are you complaining or saying he has issues. She replied she never complained, hence here is where I copied and pasted her line. And she said I didn’t understand. I agreed, and said the guy seemed like a decent guy, who wants a relationship and friendship before sex. She said I didn’t understand, I said I didn’t because I was going on a few lines.

Then in about 18 point font told me that I didn’t understand. I said that usually when you say that somebody has isssues, it is usuallyin a negative way. She said I didn’t understand, once again, and said it wasn’t my business. I stated that it wasn’t, but if she didn’t want me to ask, why didn’t she say that things were fine, but they are taking it slow. I got a fuck off Ryan in reply. OK, why?

After the Internet bubble burst, he even built a site that let people download computer cursors in the form of waving flags; the trick was that they also downloaded software that would monitor their Internet movements and show them pop-up ads.

I read this news article yestereday, which the above quote is from. The guy, Chris DeWolfe, that owns the domain of MySpace, used to be a not-so-nice guy on this Information Super Highway we have here. Just as that quote says, DeWolfe used to make pop-up ads that track movements online. I have seen the same sort of banner on MySpace that is ‘Click here to get this cursor.’ Is this the same sort of thing as before?

To me, it would be an ample oppurtunity to get some ad-ware into people’s systems. Why? Because I am guessing that a majority of MySpace users are female teens. Seeing as my sister, and other females my age and younger, like things because they are ‘pretty.’ This beautifying factor could almost be undoubtably translated to the computer. I bet if you would as my sister if she would like that boring arrow cursor changed into a dancing ballerenia, or a ballet shoe, she would say yes. Ok, maybe not today, but a few years ago.

So the past few days I have heard people say “I am fluent in _____.” And they ramble off a language or two. But are they really fluent? What does it honestly mean you are fluent? Does taking 3, 4, 5, or even 8 classes dedicated to some language, and having a perfect grade in the classes envoke fluency? I don’t think so.

Why? Well the definition of fluent is “able to express oneself readily and effortlessly” (source). Then why on desktops are there dictionaries, thesaurus, and grammar guides. Most Americans will probably say they are fluent in English, but those that are reading this ask them to define defenestrate* for you.

Chances are unless they have advanced education or something, they will not know what that means.

Maybe to be fluent, thet need to be able to talk for some amount of time. But what would be a reasonable amount? I am 22 years old, English is my native language. I know bits of others, but the other day somebody asked me something general, like my name, and I just gave them a blank stare for a few moments. Wouldn’t a plain answer flow out like the definition?

Maybe there are studies that investigate this, and I just have no idea where to look for such things. I just got aggervated hearing like four people saying how they were fluent. I just wanted to say “ok, translate: [insert a crazy phrase] for me.”

*defenestrate: to throw out of a window. (I have three ‘words of the day’)

Thomas you left me no choice other than to block you. You can use any email address any name handle you care to and you will be blocked still. See when you leave comments, other than your name, e-mail address and your URL, I am given your IP address. I marked your IP as spam, so all comments you are leaving now, and any others are automatically blocked. So I knew it was you when you commented as Jimmy and such.

Hi All, A guy named Steven Hargrove tried to get me to link to his blog. He is trying to win that SEO contest going on. He randomly added me to MSN. Then proceeded to PM me ten times, eventhough my message says I am sick and away.. He first thought that I was Andrew. Then Hw asked what SEO was. I told him that a simple google search should tell him. He wanted to link to his blog. I asked why should I after all I don’t know him, nor ever commented.

If he contacts you via msn, I highly recommend blocking him. Sorry if I am too late.

I feel like I should, and want to update, but there isn’t really anything that comes to mind. Earlier this week, I and a third year PhD Computer Science student figured out what was happening to these two files that I was trying to emboss for almost a month. It took us looking a the byte code that makes up every character. We found out that the three-byte codes that represented a return were not from a Windows or a Mac machine. So since the Computer Science department has unix machines, we thought it was that.

That’s actually not it. Somewhere down the line one of the e-mail programs are messing with the encoding of the file and changing things around. Which the weird thing is that I have been doing this for over two years, and never had this issue in the past. So we are trying to check everything out to figure what is going on.

Between trying to troubleshoot this myself, talking to my boss, and finally this graduate student, I have been wondering about what would have happened if one of the other guys got ahold of this before I did? Of course one of the files in question would not initially even open, so there’s that.

Then of course, on Tuesday and Thursday I got to have fun with the elevator. Tuesday it broke seven or so times, and Thursday only about five times. Each time the on-call repair guys just fixed it long enough to allow me to get to my floor. On Tuesday night, after my night class I had to wait about an hour until they came and fixed it. While I was waiting there, people passed me, sadly only a small number of people stopped and asked why I was chilling there. Unfortunately some of those people didn’t believe me when I said they were broke. That night the elevator doors were completely open with the ground of the elevator about three or four inches above the regular floor. They had to get in and push the buttons to see if they could make it work.

They would climb out and tell me that it must be broken. I tried my best to hide my expression and me saying ‘no shit? really!? I didn’t know.’ They all insisted that they could call somebody. Which everytime except once the only person they could call was about two feet away from me.

That’s all that has been going on here. I will be 22 in 9 days, woooo?